Four questions are addressed: (1) What is theory and how is it important in the development of knowledge about aging? (2) What is the state of theory in gerontology today? (3) Why has explicit theory development become devalued in gerontology during the past few decades? (4) How and why should...

About 6% of seniors in Canada have family incomes below the Low-Income Measure. (The Low-Income Measure is 50% of the median family income, adjusted for family size, and is a commonly used, if arbitrary, operational definition of relative poverty.) This is a low rate by international standards,...

The reformulation of the regulation of long-term care seen in the recent White Paper and Royal Commission in the UK has led to topical debates on long-term care for older people. Given that there are over 500,000 people in residential nursing and dual registered homes across the country, there...

There are numerous ways to better integrate the elderly into communities, many of which are contingent upon whether they will remain in their pre- retirement homes or make a move. Using a life course perspective, this paper establishes that residential history, social and family relations,...

This paper examines the conditions under which individuals begin or do not begin making financial plans for their later years. The data are drawn from a sample of mid- and later-life individuals (n=51) who participated in qualitative, life-history interviews. Participants identified three types...

Post-war policies and subsequent debates had two policy targets: reducing old-age poverty and enhancing income security for the “average worker” after retirement. While we know a lot about the first issue, the second has received less attention as a result of data limitations. We take...

The residential mobility choices of the elderly (aging-in-place, local moves, or migration) have very different policy implications forming a dynamic system of inter-related issues that present planners with a number of dilemmas which are particularly sensitive to local context. These include...

Local planning for an aging population in Ontario is multi-sectorial, involving a variety of policy initiatives and a complex funding system. It is important to understand what planning bodies have jurisdiction over issues associated with aging in the community, the extent to which such issues...

Illness increases with age. All else equal, an older population has greater needs for health care. This logic has led to dire predictions of skyrocketing costs-- "apocalyptic demography". Yet numerous studies have shown that aging effects are relatively small, and all else is not equal. Cost...

Although population aging at the national level has received much attention, its geographical dimensions have not. Here we explore the demographic processes which underlie population aging at the provincial and metropolitan scale for the periods 1991-1996 and 1996-2001. A demographic accounting...